A global organisation with a human rights mandate

A global organisation with a human rights mandate

Article ID:

19622

As a global organisation with a human rights mandate, WAN-IFRA oversees initiatives to ensure that the press’ essential role in society is understood and respected. The organisation fights and campaigns to abolish 'Insult Laws' and Criminal Defamation in Africa, to protect copyright on-line, to maintain open coverage of newsworthy events, to promote gender balance in the news industry.

Golden Pen of Freedom Award: Martin Schibbye receives The Golden Pen of Freedom 2014 on behalf of Eskinder NegaWAN-IFRA advocates and campaigns for press freedom worldwide, bringing you a healthy perspective on the many collective challenges facing our industry. Promoting the safety of journalists is a prime focus area, along with actively campaigning to end the impunity for those who attack and kill media professionals. Speaking out on behalf of jailed colleagues, addressing legislative barriers, and denouncing the many online challenges is part of our daily mission. More than ever, technical concerns are becoming political and civic challenges that give our whole project its fundamental meaning. No technology is immune from ethical and regulatory questions, and our global policy advocacy work focuses particularly on the critical global Internet governance issues that impact the independence of the press and shape the foundations of our digital society.

WAN-IFRA works to strengthen the skills, capacity and networks of media and their institutions in a local, regional and international context. Development actions include capacity building initiatives such as skills development training, coaching, mentoring, networking and skills-exchange activities. WAN-IFRA often engages in both advocacy and development in parallel.

This dual approach of applying advocacy and development is designed to treat the media ecosystem in its entirety, from content to capacity building, organisational structure to legal and regulatory frameworks and the media’s overall position in society. It allows WAN-IFRA to address challenges to media freedom from multiple perspectives, leveraging experiences and synergies between advocacy and development projects, partnerships and the wider expertise of WAN-IFRA’s international community to encourage meaningful change within societies.

Our 2015-2017 Media Freedom Programme aims to assist meaningful change in more than 25 countries across the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia, as well as certain hotspots in Europe and Latin America. Within each of the selected intervention countries, there is significant potential for democratic growth to take hold and flourish. WAN-IFRA believes that media is at the heart of unlocking and supporting this potential within any society.

Our works aims to:

Improve citizen empowerment and engagement through broader access to independent media on and offline;

Better protect media against political, economic, and legal pressures, as well as physical harm;